"I felt good about Hillary Clinton. I loved Bill Clinton. I thought he did a fantastic job," said Tammy Dowd, a secretary from Unity.

Her impression of Obama?

"Inexperience," she said.

In another part of the state, Andrea DeMars, a Manchester college student, had similar thoughts. "Clinton had the experience. Obama doesn't really have it," she said.

Obama badly needs to win over wary voters such as these, because New Hampshire is one of November's swing states. In 2004, Democrat John Kerry, a senator from next-door Massachusetts, won the state's four electoral votes with 50.2 percent, while in 2000, Republican George W. Bush carried it with 48 percent, the only Northeastern state he won.